In the last four months I’ve spent less time online than I have in the past fifteen years. Yet, these months away from the net have been the most intellectually stimulating period of my life since college.

Part of the enjoyment of this period is becuase I’ve been spending more time thinking and writing, not reading many books, many blogs, or blogging much myself. I will be spending more time online now but I’m going to approach it differently, I think.

I have over 250 feeds in my bloglines, though I only really look at a handful regularly. The others are just there to remind me that someday I might be interested in looking at those topics closer.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s okay not attempting to keep track with everything that is happening on the wide range of topics that interest me. It’s more important, for me at least, to think about what I am reading, its impact on the areas that interest me - libraries, teaching, learning, research.

When blogging does one need to read a lot of blogs? Does reading a lot of blogs and commenting in short, quick bursts make one a better blogger, more of a participant in the dialogue of bloggers? Some blogs exist to keep others informed about a topic, other blogs exist as a tool for expressing detailed thoughts on a subject. Blogs don’t need to be useful to anyone other than the writer.

Lately, because I’m researching a specific topic I find myself looking at more blogs that I find via search engines than the ones in my bloglines . A long entry that someone wrote a year ago can be more interesting than the current, short take on a hot topic.

The other day I came across a quote by Borges: “It is not the reading that matters, but the rereading.”

Perhaps what matters is not the blogging, reading the blogs, keeping up-to-date with everything, but simply reflecting about what we do read. And writing - whether it’s on paper or a blog - is a way of organizing our thoughts. Of course, this is nothing new, most educators know that it’s the thinking that really matters.